There were more signs of Apple's disinterest in Macworld Expo as a showcase. For years now at Apple keynotes, in its quarterly financial calls with analysts, and even in its press material, Apple has used one event as a benchmark for the number of customers to pass through the doors of its many retail stores: Macworld Expo. The clear signal: "When our retail stores reach so many people, what's the need for a trade show?"

And of course, the cost of exhibiting as a trade show is enormous. There's the booth space, the construction of the booths, the army of employees who need to run booth operations during the week, the lost productivity of people who could be working if they weren't schlepping to a trade show.

In the aftermath of the announcement, I've seen a few people suggest that Apple's ditching Expo because it could get the same sort of exposure at January's other big trade show, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I think that's dead wrong. At Macworld Expo, Apple is king. It has an entire trade show built around an ecosystem it controls. At CES, it's just another player in an enormous pond. And all the other trade-show issues--a schedule you can't control, an intermediary running the event, and the cost of exhibiting as such an event--still would apply.

Now here's the funny thing, something that I believed back during the foofaraw over the Boston edition of Macworld Expo, and something that I still believe: Macworld Expo as an idea would be better off without Apple.

Bear with me here--I'm not talking crazy.